Iraq Reality Check
I have to give credit to the Republicans. They are a tenacious bunch, aren't they? They've single-mindedly embarked on an electoral strategy to produce good news out of Iraq by simply insisting it is so.
Too bad so little of it is true.
The killing of Zarqawi and the formation of a fullly-staffed government cabinet are both positive developments. But they hardly represent any turning point in the war. The truth is, things are worse -- not better.Â
Supporters of the war are quick to charge critics of secretly hoping for bad news. But these hawks ought to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves just who, exactly, is being irresponsible? Denial is always a dangerous position. Ever more so when the lives of others are at stake.
Perhaps these folks who are so convinced that it's getting better all the time could put aside a minute or two to read the reports of our ambassador in Iraq, Zalomay Khalizad. As Kevin Drum reports, the ambassador sent a lengthy cable back to the State Department recently in which he outlined, in hair-raising detail, what's it's like nowadays outside the Green Zone. Here's Drum's summary of the cable:
- Women are being increasingly harrassed: made to wear a veil, told not to use cell phones or drive a car, and being forced to wear the hijab at work. Men who wear shorts or jeans have come under attack from "what staff members describe as Wahabis and Sadrists."Â
- Different neighborhoods are controlled by different militias, and staff members have to be careful to dress and speak differently in each one. "People no longer trust most neighbors." Even the upscale Mansur district is now an "unrecognizable ghost town." A newspaper editor reports that ethnic cleansing is taking place in virtually every Iraqi province.Â
- Electricity is available for only a few hours a day and fuel lines can require waits as long as 12 hours.Â
- Being known as an embassy employee "is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people."Â
- "Objectivity, civility, and logic" from staff members are becoming harder to come by as pressure outside the Green Zone increases. The embassy can't get good information if people become too scared to speak honestly.
June 19th, 2006 at 11:21 am
But they got wonder ful fodder for their thirty second ads which will feature the names of the 150+ Democrats who voted “No” and therefore showed that they “don’t support the troops or want Victory” in Iraq. This isn’t about reality. Its about hanging on to power. Will it work? Maybe not. But H.L. Mencken once said that no ever went broke underestimating the American People so we shall see. If the Dems were smart they would havevoted “Present” but maybe “smart Dem” is an oxymoron.
June 19th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Why is killing – not apprehending – but killing and showing his dead body on television repeatedly (to emphasize the point you are making – agit. prop for desensitization to death) – Zarqawi good news? Some intelligent people – Eric Margolis, others, have speculated that Zarqawi, as we know him, didn’t exist- and was possibly an agent provacateur. Whatever the case may be, if we are to believe what is reported, Zarqawi was a terrible individual, who should have been arrested, not beat to death by US military personell.
Further, to describe the government as functioning is a joke, as points you make later in your post point out.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
This is nonsense, Marc, and you know it. You just put these things up to stir up the commenters.
Women are being increasingly harrassed: made to wear a veil, told not to use cell phones or drive a car…. That’s how bad it’s gotten?!!! I can understand them not wanting women to drive, but just how do you think it would be if we just pulled out, or should I say cut-and-run? How would Arab women fare, then?
You would expect that women’s rights groups, if they actually cared more about women than left-wing politics (see Anita Broderick and Bill Clinton,) would be praising the adminstration for helping Iraqi women to achieve more rights. Hey, they voted, didn’t they? And, they didn’t even have an Emily’s List to know how. They can actually think without the left wing tellng them what to do.
I suspect Iraqi women appreciate their freedom more than our left wing political groups–who, come to think of it, would rather see Iraqi women in chains just to help the left-wing political movement here. You know it’s true.
The liberals can’t see past their own self-interests of today. We need to consider the long-term benefits of staying until Iraq can run itself and defend itself as a democracy.
Oh, and I heard on the news today from a Democratic spokesman (and, I can’t be very specific) that the Dems were going to have a counter-vote to try to “catch” the Repubicans like the Republicans did to the Democrats. One difference is that he labeled the Democratic resolution as something like courageous while he labeled the Republican vote as sleazy politics. How stupid does he think we are? Oh, I forgot. He wasn’t speakiing to me. He was speaking to most of you.
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rlc, you said it best. “If the dems were smart” (but they’re not), which is what I’ve been telling everyone all along. They don’t have to say, “Vote for me, I’m stupid.” They just expose their positions with no solutions and everyone figures it out.
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Jcummings, your reports on Zarqawi are fictitious. You report the news that you wish had been rather than was.
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Sorry for the rant. I have real work to do now. I’m sure that there are other conservative voices who can be calmer than me.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I love Wizard of OZ analogies. Baum is still so pertinent.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
And he had to drag some imaginary rape into the fray with is ridiculous screed. Repeat the same lies over and stick head back into sand. How’s that workin for ya? The blood is still spilled even as you look for gophers nonetheless.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
This is the true Vietnam Syndrome. After Veitnam you had something of a consenus among responsable people that it was terrible, often generously termed “a mistake.” Flag waving and reality, however, are soon parted. From Reagan’s “Noble Effort” to Bush ones “statute of limitations” the right was hell bent to sweep aside the hard lessons of Vietnam, often drenced in a phony outpouring of love for the troops. As Tony Snow’s response to the 2,500th troop death shows (“it’s a number”), they care a lot more about their illusions than a dead marine or two.
The balderdash that Vietnam was “lost by the politicans” that it was “cut and run”, is as ingranded in their never never land as animatronic Dutch staring down the U.S.S.R.
It’s silly, and as long as it’s kept in it’s place it’s harmless enough……… If some draft dodging, silver spooned dunce wants to walk around Harvard in the flight jacket he used to dodge the draft, meanwhile cheering on the poor guys who have to go fight, well, it’s not like he’s going to do any DAMAGE….
BUT…….. SOME people thought there was nothing wrong with turning the goverment over to such people. And it must always be pointed out, now that they have produced predictiable catastrophe, it is you that squirm more than the Dems.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Woodman, the nutcase in question is Jaunita Broaddrick, 3 Bs. Keep your gold digging bimbos stright.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Yeah, that’s who I meant.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
A city in Pennsylvania just passed the strictest immigration policies in Ameria.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060619/ap_on_re_us/illegal_immigrants_crackdown;_ylt=AgcaCQL7IWQhXBl.qc_EhetH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-
for Yahoo article on Hazelton and here’s the mayor’s open letter:
http://www.hazletoncity.org/home_frameset.htm
June 19th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
As the night went on, and the House members wandered off, the debate continued for the benefit of CSpan watchers. It got weirder and more delusional, ending with a “dialogue” between Chris Shays and a guy from Tennessee, I think. Anyway, the theme was: “what if we had announced a date certain for the end of WWII? Hitler would have hunkered down and survived, and returned again later….we can’t give the terrorists that option now that victory is within our grasp in Iraq…”
That illuminated the biggest flaw in the Republicans’ sales job: they did not define “victory.” In Europe in WWII, in 1945, Allied troops were marching in to the countries taken by the Axis, including Germany and Italy. They were daily bombing German cities into dust…taking the greatest cultural and industrial achievements of Western man out with the bathwater. For those of us watching World Cup-related programming, note how “new-looking” most of these German cities are. It’s because very little dates back before 1945.
My point is that victory was definable and in fact was defined in WWII. However, in our current permanent war, the equivalent “victory” was achieved when Saddam was deposed and then captured, and we discovered the absence of weapons of mass destruction. “Mission Accomplished,” as someone said at the time. All the rest is nation-building. Where is the rule that we cannot set a date certain for this current endeavor to end?
It was all political. It was an effort to confuse then convince the equivocal middle that this is all a litmus test for patriotism and commitment to national defense. I am thinking that this will be the foreign policy equivalent to the Terri Schiavo debate…the day when, to adopt the appropriate Wizard of Oz metaphor, the curtain parts and the rightist string-pullers are revealed doing their anti-democratic thing.
June 19th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Who is this Kahlizad guy anyhow? Whose side is he on 1) and 2) what’s the harping about electricity. What’s the big deal if demand has gone up and supply has decreased or flattened? I really don’t get it.
June 19th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
And here’s a reality check for you Marc Cooper:
“Permanent War?
Dealing with Realities in Iraq and Washington
By Robert Dreyfuss
One of the most unfortunate myths pervading American culture, the American psyche, and the whole American weltanschauung — and it’s one for which we might as well go ahead and blame movie director Frank Capra — is that in most situations the good guys win. Morality triumphs. The greedy and self-interested, the cruel and mean-spirited are defeated. Ultimately, or so the myth goes, the bad guys win some of the battles, but in the end the good guys win the wars.
Sadly, in the real world, good doesn’t always win. Sometimes, good isn’t even there. When it comes to Iraq, the left, the liberals, the progressives (for the sake of argument, the good guys) sometimes seem to have their heads in the clouds. That’s true in regard to the crucial question of whether President Bush’s stay-the-course strategy can succeed. The answer, unfortunately, is: Yes, it can.
The Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq today, as in the invasion of 2003, is: Use military force to destroy the political infrastructure of the Iraqi state; shatter the old Iraqi armed forces; eliminate Iraq as a determined foe of U.S. hegemony in the oil-rich Persian Gulf; build on the wreckage of the old Iraq a new state beholden to the U.S.; create a new political class willing to be subservient to our interests in the region; and use that new Iraq as a base for further expansion.
To achieve all that, the President is determined to keep as much military power as he can in Iraq for as long as it takes, while recruiting, training, funding, and supervising a ruthless Iraqi police and security force that will gradually allow the American military to reduce their “footprint” in the country without entirely leaving. The endgame, as he and his advisors imagine it, would result in a permanent U.S. military presence in the country, including permanent bases and basing rights, and a predominant position for U.S. business and oil interests. ”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=93289
June 19th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I’m not taking a position on the rest of the article excerpted by Jose, but this sentence “To achieve all that, the President is determined to keep as much military power as he can in Iraq for as long as it takes,” is demonstrably false. The Administration went in much much lighter than they could have and have persisted in not adding more force. So the claim is false on its face.
I’m always a bit mystified when people speculate on the motives of leaders (they want a puppet regime, they planned the dismantling of the baath party as an instrument of hegemony, [when they seemed unable to plan anything at all]) without actual evidence.
I don’t much like the cut-and-run rhetoric of Woody and his pals, but this macabre suggestion by Dreyfuss later in the article is right on the edge: “Just as the antiwar movement in the United States can strengthen the resistance in Iraq, the Iraqi resistance can aid the antiwar movement.” I presume the anti-war movement is aided thus by more chaos, more death and more IEDs. Certainly no one really wishes for this, and I hope desperately that Dreyfuss is merely making an observation. But I become a little suspicious when I read, “Who was it, after all, who pulverized the institutions of the Iraqi state and society?” (and who exactly pines away for that “society” I wonder?)
June 19th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Dan, the key phrase is ‘as much as he can’. Keep in mind there are good reasons, from empire builders’ perspectives at least, to NOT place too many troops in Iraq. 1) It reveals plainly that the US is an occupier as opposed to ‘liberator’, 2) completely throws out the ‘sovereignty’ facade, 3) makes it more difficult to carry out the ‘mission’ of empire to carry on *low intensity* invasions/occupations wherever the US sees fit for whatever pretexts it sees fit to conjure up.
Dreyfuss is very much on the money when he declares that the goal of the invasion is to lay the groundwork for creating a government led by US dependent politicians who will organize the economy along exactly or as close to exactly as possible–the lines that the US [be it led by Bush or Clinton] expect [i.e. privatization across the board]. To that end, destruction or ‘failure’ ironically leads to the achievement of US ‘goals’.
And he’s right, the antiwar movement does not understand that.
June 19th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
I now read on HuffPost that J Murtha made much the same argument On last Sun’s Meet the Press that I made above: that we “won”, if it matters.
June 19th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
I think it IS getting “better” every month in Iraq, by some measures, but certainly not by every measure. If you can’t measure it, or are unwilling to, you’re not very serious about evaluating it.
“The truth is, things are worse — not better. ”
How is it worse to have had 3 successful elections rather than none? How is it worse to have a named Iraqi Minister of Defense, and Interior, rather than not have Ministers named?
Indeed, some things might be worse, but what if some things are better? Is the elephant like trunk or wall or tree (as the blind men claimed)?
Well, Bush is down to a “B” in my book on Iraq; I had him graded at a “A” level until 2500 US soldiers die.
Naturally the intellectual cowards (like Marc Coopers?) who bash Bush are afraid of noting any countable measures and grades for Bush doing a great, OK, fair, poor, or terrible job.
“then you tell me where we’re headed.”
Well, to slow, expensive nation-building of a democratic Iraq, if the US troops stay some 5-50 years,
OR some horrible civil war of thousands, hundreds of thousands being killed by warlords and sects and militias, if the US pulls out.
The cowardly Left may claim “there’s no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath”, but most think there would be.
Marc, why not be brave and write: If the US pulls out now, there will (not?) be a bloodbath of hundreds of thousands being killed over months.
Will, or will not.
Bush-hate noise means it’s harder to hear “how to do the needed nation-building better”.
June 19th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Jose, you’re probably correct that the original war planners intented to turn Iraq into a model neoliberal democracy. Haven’t events on the ground likely persuaded even these hard-headed folks that more modest goals are sufficient? Don’t you think Bush & Co. would be relieved to see an end to violence (women’s rights be damned) so they could pack up and head out (maybe keeping the odd strategic military base or two)? I certainly think the neoliberal economic model was part of the original hubristic fantasy, but I think reality has at least disabused them of that notion.
June 19th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Tom Grey is no doubt right that some things are better than 3, 2 or 1 yr(s) ago. But there is some assumption in his writing that the “bloodbath” is something that is in the offing. Is it not going on now? How fast does the factional blood have to flow before it is deemed a “bath”? I think I know the distinction that people are making, but truly it may well be a false one. Whether the current factional shedding of blood constitutes a “civil war” is a related question of distinction that can be answered in different ways, as well. But the Iraqi folks are dying, and until we get out of Dodjuh, American folks are going to be among ‘em.
June 19th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
“Don’t you think Bush & Co. would be relieved to see an end to violence (women’s rights be damned) so they could pack up and head out (maybe keeping the odd strategic military base or two)? I certainly think the neoliberal economic model was part of the original hubristic fantasy, but I think reality has at least disabused them of that notion.”
I think that’s a possibility, but not terribly strong one. Dreyfuss makes the point, and it seems pretty reasonable, that an Iraq driven to this point is terribly dependent on the US for survival. No better context for the US to dictate terms of economic survival for a dependent regime.
Tom Grey, I can’t predict for certain no bloodbath if the US pulls out now, but I can predict if it stays in the bloodbath is sure to come. No, let me restate that more accurately, the bloodbath will continue.
June 19th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
So if you happen to be a winger it’s OK to call Cooper a coward? There’s a real colossal double standard here in blogland.
June 19th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
(Reverse spelling to avoid comment banning of names.) kroY .A kraM, why do you go on using fake names such as doowlE ekaJ and Publius? This is like me pretending not to recognize the little kids in their costumes on Halloween. “Who could that be? Whoooo could that be? Why, it’s Mark from down the street! What a cute outfit!” Good grief.
==========
On Iraq, it’s like dealing with the mafia. If you do nothing, everything seems nice as long as people pay their extortion money and suffer some broken fingers and as long as law enforcement (aka the U.N.) is on the take with bribes. But, let the FBI (Bush) come in to clean up, then the mafia starts a shooting war like terrorist sects in Iraq–except that the terrorists in Iraq, who were happy as long as they were in control, even kill their own. In the end, however, the good police prevail and the bad guys are dead or in prison. You have to pay short term prices for long-term peace. (Suddenly I feel like Billy Madison explaining the story of the little puppy.)
But, as an alternative, people on the left who criticize Bush & Co. don’t mind that other people were and would be paying the price for generations. Heck, the left expects everyone else besides them to pay the price. I bet you guys never pick up the check after a dinner out.
June 19th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Woody wrote:
On Iraq, it’s like dealing with the mafia.
————————–
Your so full of shit…just awhile ago you, right-wing nationalists were claiming this was WW2, now it’s the Godfather? Cowards, the lot of you.
June 19th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
WW2 was fought partly in Italy.
June 19th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Jose,
The author’s analysis reminds me of Chomsky’s comments regarding the “failure” in Vietnam: That the destruction of that country’s infrastructure and ability to independently function was supposedly, in his opinion, the real objective all along, and that to hawks in this country, the war was actually a “success.”
While the article that you link to is definitely thought provoking – with a theory which I myself have actually batted around with, but no later than January of 05 – I don’t believe that any administration (Democratic or Republican), presently or in the forseeable future, will be able to have the political capital to maintain any kind of a presence in that country or region of the world for very long. I live in the midwest, and people, while supportive of the troops, constantly ask, “When are the soldiers coming home?”
Furthermore, the Bush Administration is most certainly walking on eggshells when it comes to devoting manpower to the Iraq war. The war is being conducted by the administration through the polls, which show that most Americans want the war to be won, but without an additional committment of troops (which is foolhardy. Imagine the outcome of past wars if polls had guided decision making).
I agree that at one time, the Bush Administration’s goals for Iraq closely matched Dreyfuss’s analysis. However, the situation in Iraq now is this, courtesy of a friend of mine over there currently: the entire region has become a lightening rod for sectarian violence. Hardly the kind of middle eastern South Korea that would serve US imperial power well. No, for the neo-conservatives it is now strictly about saving face.
Long story short: It isn’t any more complex than it appears, although it may once have been.
June 19th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
How to argue with a liberal about the war in Iraq
Use this handy 4 point checklist of Forrest Gump-simple debating tactics to make sure you never have to set foot outside your hermetically sealed logic bubble.
1. Saddam Hussein was superduper evil. Repeat that as often as possible and
use that fact to prevent the discussion from drifting into specifics about the
war or the current state of Iraq or the historical reasons Iraq became a
dictatorship. When a liberal notes that terrorism is now commonplace within Iraq
and Islamic fundamentalists virtually run the country, just ask: Aren’t you
glad Saddam Hussein is gone? When a liberal notes that WMD were not found, just
say it again: Would you rather Saddam still be in power? Should the liberal
mention that the U.S. supported Saddam when his regime’s atrocities were peaking, just say that was a “different” situation and repeat: “Aren’t you
glad Saddam is gone.”
2. The future is unwritten. No matter how many innocent Iraqi civilians or
U.S. soldiers are killed in the war, no matter how much money the U.S. has to
borrow to pay for the war, how many allies it loses, how much the growing chaos
in Iraq contributes to terrorism, no one can say for sure what will happen in
the future. So whatever fact about the current situation in Iraq a liberal
throws up, just say the future will get better and shift the discussion to the
issue of loyalty. Say that a loyal person would have faith that the U.S. will
bring democracy to Iraq in the future and everything will be better for
everyone. If the liberal insists that history and current events all point to a
failure in Iraq, accuse him of claiming to be clairvoyant.
3. A favorite liberal theme is that U.N. inspectors, U.S. intelligence experts and
others had made Bush aware that there were doubts about whether Iraq had WMD
before the war, so Bush’s claim that he was certain Iraq possessed WMD had to be
false. Liberals also like to say that Bush has a record of making false claims
about other politicized issues, such as the effects of his tax cuts, the cost of
his Medicare benefit increases and the content of scientific inquiries into
climate change.
But no one can ever know whether Bush actually believed what he said
And if Bush believed what he was saying, no matter how plainly false his
statements were, he can’t be called a liar. This argument works for any case
where what the president says diverges from the facts, especially since Bush
claims of ignorance or misunderstanding of evidence are highly credible.
4. The media hate Bush and will do anything they can to make him and his war
unpopular. Increasingly, liberals like to point out that this war is extremely
unpopular not only in the U.S. but worldwide. Same goes for Bush himself, who
has the support of less than a third of Americans. But that’s because even
though Rupert Murdoch owns a huge slice of the mainstream media and is somewhere
to the right of Ann Coulter; the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is
stridently right wing and every major American newspaper has at least one right
wing columnist, the press controls what people think. If the press wasn’t
against Bush, he’d be extremely, universally popular and liberalism would simply cease to
exist, since all Americans are at heart conservative, they just don’t know it because the media has tricked them into thinking they’re liberal.
June 20th, 2006 at 3:22 am
Michael Crosby asks, but cowardly fails to answer: “How fast does the factional blood have to flow before it is deemed a “bathâ€?”
(Yeah, I like good, tough questions — and usually think those who ask them but refuse to try to answer them, are intellectual cowards. Including our host Marc C. )
Obviously it is somewhat subjective, so there is no “right” or “wrong” answer.
Some aspects: how many Iraqis die in auto accidents each year (not bombs)? I don’t know, but if those murdered by violence are fewer than those killed by car accidents, I’d say it’s not yet a bloodbath. If it’s 10 times more likely than any other cause of death, I’d say it is. If the death rate is inbetween, I’d say it’s approaching bloodbath levels.
Comparisons: to Darfur or Congo. If Iraqis are now dying at rates lower than in other conflict zones, that means Iraq could clearly get worse.
Is the Hamas – Fatah killing a bloodbath yet? I know it’s not yet reported as such; don’t think it is, quite.
The Bush-hate of the press is partly seen by what the Western press does NOT cover — daily/ weekly counts of bodies in Darfur, or Congo, or Zimbabwe. Are those deaths less important? Well, the producers think they’ll sell fewer advertisements than super saturation about Iraqis killed, especially the far fewer allegedly killed by US soldiers.
June 20th, 2006 at 3:42 am
“I live in the midwest, and people, while supportive of the troops, constantly ask, “When are the soldiers coming home?—
I really don’t know what this means, ‘while supportive of the troops’. When in American history have people not ‘supported’ the ‘troops’, whatever the heck that means? Why do people feel like it’s so important to repeat that phrase over and over and over…like it’s some religious phrase one repeats in church that no thought goes into but seems significant.
I agree it is complex and messy. It’s also messy in a way that keeps Iraqis ‘leaders’ extremely dependent on the US when it comes to important decisions.
June 20th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Tom – you may be one of the weirdest, most obsessively redundant and predictable bloviaters on the planet, but I think even you could figure out that the reason the U.S. press reports far more on the violence in Iraq than in Darfur, Congo or Zimbabwe is because we have a hundred and thirty thousand of our soldiers there, not the mythical “BushHate”. Try for once to get a grip.
Oh yeah – fuck, shit, etc. (Don’t want to disappoint.)
June 20th, 2006 at 9:14 am
I wonder how Tom Grey feels that his hated “Left” enemies just won an election in Slovakia…
June 20th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Liberty….. Sure, there are people who hate Bush. You’re lucky that Dems don’t believe in utterly corrupt Special Prosacutors to tie up his presidency on nonsense. Bush’s 2 year free ride in the press post 9-11 ( when the Dems were sadly played by their own fairly decent loyal opposition instinct) is unlike anything else in modern history.
What a crybaby you are. Bush’s contempt is well earned but tragicaly late in arriving.
June 20th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Just answer the question.
June 20th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
bunkerbuster: lol. The next time Woody, Tom Grey, etc. posts a reponse to ‘liberals’, ‘Bush-haters’, etc. (fill in the blank with your preferred ad hominem), I’ll refer back to the list. I think you’ve exhaustively chronicled the standard rhetorical arsenal of pro-war apologists, although there are permutations of the four arguments which combine elements from the list. For example: “The media hates Bush, so they cover up the fact that Iraqis are better off now that Saddam is gone” (which draws on aspects of 1 and 4). I do, however, think you’ve captured the essentials.
June 20th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Don’t be a weasel, take a stand on the war:
Radical journalists should be calling for the resignation Of President Bush.
June 20th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
“When in American history have people not ’supported’ the ‘troops’, whatever the heck that means?”
People on the left like Michael Moore have suggested that it would be nice for more troops in Iraq to be killed, and there are many many more examples that I am too tired to get into. Apparently you don’t get out to many of the “anti-war” protests they have nowadays, where vitriole extends not just to Washington but to the boys. Spend some time in Berkeley, like I have, and you will no longer be feeling around in Pollyannaville, lorie.
June 20th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Many people in America for years have demonstrated hostility toward American troops, and the left, for that matter, hardly holds a monopoly on that. My uncle was greeted along with his buddies coming home from Vietnam with “baby killer,” and of course the “Swift Boat Veterans” and the people on the right who didn’t even serve in Vietnam accused Kerry and his unit of killing youngsters. I also think that cutting veterans benefits is hardly supportive of the military. I’ve only touched the surface, lorie.
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